What's next in the world of goalunited? Find out!
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Friday, 12 April 2013

What’s “next” in goalunited!

Hello everyone!

Welcome to the goalunited Dev Blog. This blog is
intended to give you profound insights into the project plan and the minds of
the developers, designers and those responsible. On top of that, it will also give you exclusive previews and firsthand
information about the future progress of goalunited.

Talking about the future of goalunited, there are
amazing news and a huge evolutionary step to look forward to. Get ready
for “goalunited next”!

What is “goalunited next”?

First of all, “goalunited next” is our working title.
It will take some time to develop and therefore the title “goalunited 2014” would not be
quite suitable. Also, “goalunited next” will be so much more than just another
update as we apply it at the end of each year. Other than those updates that
focus mostly on bringing big new features and improvements, “goalunited next” will
be a fundamental refactoring of the goalunited interface and all of its
features.

As many of you know, gaming platforms are constantly
in transition. PC, consoles and browser are still important platforms, but more
and more people are using their mobile devices like tablets and smartphones for
surfing, communicating and playing. goalunited, as one of the most successful
and longest-serving browser-based manager games, needs to adapt to be able to hold its
course.

As reaction to this trend, which we believe will
become more and more distinct in the future, goalunited will go cross-platform,
becoming fully playablein both a
regular browser and as an app for tablet devices.

A major consideration for this development is the size
and complexity of goalunited. At this moment it contains 160
screens and popups, leading to a gameplay in which the managers switch between
different screens quite often. This number will have to be reduced to make the
game playable conveniently on a tablet device. We believe we have come up with
a great concept to combine many of the current views into fewer, much more
comfortable screens, without taking away the depth of the game. Our main goal
here is to create a functionality that is both fun, comfortable and playable
without limitations from a tablet, and at the same time improves the playing
experience from a traditional browser.

Saying all this, it’s not just about making the views
more structured, “goalunited next” also gives us the chance to “tidy up”.
goalunited grew a lot over the last years, and we have implemented new features
with high frequency. This has led to some technical and conceptual issues we
will now focus on. Our goal is to develop a goalunited version with a pleasant
bug status that runs smoothly on the technical side. And it also should be
intuitive, comfortable and innovative on the gameplay side.

We know that many of you are also waiting for
goalunited to be available as app for smartphones. Due to the huge amount of
screens and features it is very hard to offer goalunited in full extent.

At the moment, we are looking into the option of
developing a companion app. This app
would offer selected key features to allow access anywhere and anytime. However, the smartphone app is a separate
project and has a lower focus than the “goalunited next” rebuild.

What does this mean for goalunited 2013?

It will take quite some time to develop “goalunited
next” completely and with the desired quality. During the development we are of
course not neglecting goalunited 2013 in any way. Our priority will be the
continuous work on bugfixes and improvements. And we will also keep adding new
content, just with a somewhat reduced frequency. With all this, it is
important to establish a good balance that will allow the speedy and
high-quality development of “goalunited next”, while guaranteeing the
uninterrupted and interesting flow of goalunited 2013. Once “goalunited next”
is completed and tested, it will replace the (at that time)
running goalunited version, without changes to your clubs and your progress in
the game.

Over the next few weeks we will show you many details
about “goalunited next”, and we hope that you will not only look forward to
this great new development, but that we can show you that this change will give
us the opportunity to improve all aspects of goalunited, all the way down
to its core features. In the end, every change and new development gives the
option to discover the game from a new perspective and it offers a fun
challenge for all ambitious managers.

Best
regards,

Jules (Game
Director)

Coming up next:

We will show you the first screen layouts and take a
closer look into the timeline and team structure of the project.